Australia/Israel Review

ROCKET AND TERROR REPORT

At least 17 rockets were launched from Gaza between March 26 and April 22, including ten on April 6. Most were intercepted. Israel has killed dozens of Hamas commanders and hundreds of operatives in airstrikes and ground fighting in Gaza. One Israeli soldier was killed in Gaza on April 19.

Sweeping IDF counter-terrorism operations continue across the West Bank, killing and capturing dozens of suspected terrorist operatives and destroying their military infrastructure. 

IDF TAKES SECOND CORRIDOR IN GAZA 

The IDF has captured and is expanding a new 12km corridor, dubbed the Morag corridor, to separate Rafah from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, as it attempts to isolate Hamas and renew military pressure on it to release hostages.

The IDF has also reportedly expanded the buffer zone between Gaza and Israeli territory significantly, in some areas by as much as 1-2 km.

HAMAS REQUESTED $500 MILLION FROM IRAN TO DESTROY ISRAEL

On April 7, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz made public documents uncovered by the IDF in Gaza, recording correspondence between Hamas and Iran prior to the October 7 mass terror attack. The documents show that in 2021 Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif requested Iran’s Quds Force contribute US$500 million for a plan to “destroy Israel” within two years. The head of the Palestine department within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hassan Izadi, replied positively, but did not supply as much money as Hamas requested. 

Meanwhile, at the end of March, Hamas reportedly responded to mass demonstrations in Gaza against its rule there by killing at least six protest leaders, including Odai al-Rubai, 22, who was tortured for four hours and then returned to his family shortly before he died. Gazans also reported that Hamas is shooting and beating protesters in the streets, and cracking down on journalists to prevent the media from reporting the protests.

ISRAEL AND TURKEY DISCUSS POSSIBLE DE-ESCALATION IN SYRIA

Turkey – now the major foreign power dominating Syria – and Israel held talks in early April to create an official deconfliction line, a communication channel to reduce the risk of potential clashes between the two sides there. The US reportedly supports the move. It follows a series of IDF airstrikes against military sites in Syria, including Tiyas Airbase, which Turkey had allegedly been planning to use. 

The IDF undertook several other targeted airstrikes in Syria to destroy military capabilities amassed by the former regime’s army and prevent them being used by jihadists. 

100 CHEMICAL WEAPONS SITES IN SYRIA

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) estimated on April 4 that at least 100 chemical weapons sites remain in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last December, according to the New York Times. The OPCW is seeking to send inspectors to Syria to search for and secure these sites. The Assad regime used chemical weapons against the Syrian people during the civil war, despite a Russian-brokered 2013 agreement in which Syria ostensibly agreed to give up all chemical weapons capabilities. 

HOUTHIS CONTINUE TO ATTACK ISRAEL

In the month following the March 18 resumption of the war in Gaza, Yemen’s Houthis launched 20 missiles and several drones at Israel. Israel said half the missiles failed in flight, and the rest were intercepted. Two missiles fired at Israel landed in Saudi Arabia. 

On April 17, the US struck a Houthi-controlled fuel port at Ras Isa in Yemen. The Houthis claimed 80 people were killed. On April 19, the US launched 13 strikes against the Yemeni capital Sanaa and port city of Hodeida, including targeting an airport in Hodeida.

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official claimed in early April that Iran had ordered its military personnel to leave Yemen in the face of the intensifying US attacks there. 

IRAN-BACKED IRAQI MILITIAS OFFER TO DISARM

Several powerful Iran-backed militias in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, were reportedly considering agreeing to disarmament in early April to avoid conflict with the US, according to unnamed commanders of the groups and Iraqi officials.

Following warnings from US officials, reports say talks between Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani and militia leaders have advanced. The move apparently reflects a weakened Iranian “Axis of Resistance” amid intensified regional conflict and Western military responses. 

LEBANON UPDATE

Iran has reportedly made several attempts to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah via the Port of Beirut since December, when the fall of Syria’s Assad regime cut off more direct smuggling routes. 

Meanwhile, the IDF is continuing its work to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its pre-war military capabilities, including carrying out a March 28 strike on a drone storage facility in Beirut’s Dahieh district, following rockets being fired at northern Israel. On April 1, an IDF strike in Beirut eliminated a Hezbollah operative and Iranian Quds Force member who was assisting Hamas in planning attacks against Israelis. 

IRAN TARGETING ISRAELIS AND JEWS ABROAD

In early April, Sweden’s security service (SAPO) revealed that Iranian operatives had been using local crime gangs to recruit minors to attempt attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets. At least four attacks in 2023-24, including a shooting and attempted bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm, have been linked to these gangs.

Meanwhile, on April 5, the Washington Post reported a foiled Iranian plot in Azerbaijan in January, in which the Quds Force allegedly offered US$200,000 to a Georgian drug trafficker to assassinate a local rabbi. 

QATAR-BACKED SCHOLARS ISSUE JIHAD CALL AGAINST ISRAEL

On March 31, the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) – an association of extremist Sunni Islamic theologians linked to the Muslim Brotherhood – issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for jihad (holy war) against Israel. The fatwa urges all Muslim governments to support Hamas “militarily, economically, and politically,” and to besiege Israel by “land, air, and sea.” Egypt’s Grand Mufti swiftly condemned the fatwa, but Qatar itself has remained silent – a stance interpreted as tacit support for it. Israel has called Qatar’s silence “disappointing”, and said it undermines Doha’s credibility as a mediator.

HAMAS QUIETLY REDUCES GAZA CASUALTY FIGURES

Hamas has reportedly quietly removed thousands of names from its list of claimed casualties of the Gaza war. As Britain’s Telegraph reported, researchers comparing Hamas’ March 2025 casualty list with those from October and August 2024 found that 3,400 claimed deaths had been removed, including 1,080 children. Andrew Fox, a former British paratrooper who has done research on Hamas’ misreporting of casualties, added that a careful analysis of the names on Hamas’ latest list shows that about 72% of the fatalities aged 13-55, Hamas’ fighting ages, are male, proving Israel is targeting fighters, not civilians.

ARGENTINIAN PROSECUTOR SEEKS WARRANT FOR IRAN’S LEADER

On April 9, Sebastian Basso, the Argentinian prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people, applied to Argentina’s Federal Court for an arrest warrant for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Basso said Khamenei, who was already Iran’s Supreme Leader at the time, “led the decision to carry out a bomb attack in Buenos Aires in July 1994 and issued [an] executive order… to carry it out.” 

Stranger than Fiction

DEADLY LIES

February 4 was the 50th anniversary of the death of the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, revered throughout the Arab world. Well-known Egyptian journalist and TV presenter Ahmed Moussa said in a television tribute that “the Zionist entity” [Israel] had sentenced Umm Kulthum to death because it supposedly saw her as a threat given how she inspired the people through her patriotic songs. There is absolutely no truth to this story, which seems to have been recycled from a 1949 newspaper article with no source. She was actually quite popular in Israel, which even has streets named after her. For the record, she died of kidney failure (Translations from Elder of Ziyon).

Meanwhile, even dying doesn’t spare people from Turkish arrest warrants if they’re enemies of the increasingly despotic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Nordic Monitor reported that, earlier this year, a Turkish high court issued an arrest warrant against Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim scholar who led opposition to Erdogan from his self-imposed exile in the US, but died on Oct. 20, 2024. Apparently issuing arrest warrants against dead dissidents helps the Turkish Government maintain suppression of their followers.

Instead of focusing on deceased people, the Palestinian Authority, which seemingly never met an antisemitic libel it didn’t like, resuscitated one of the most notorious. Commenting on PA TV on March 9 on an incident where Israeli soldiers helped settlers retrieve sheep stolen by Palestinians, PA official Ayed Morrar accused the settlers of stealing the sheep, and added, “Moreover, they poisoned the water to kill the Palestinians’ livestock.”

This echoes claims from the dark days of the Middle Ages when people trying to explain the source of plagues and other diseases accused Jews of poisoning the wells. Mass murders of Jews often followed. (Translation from Palestinian Media Watch)